My urban homesteading, make it from scratch, a whole lot of green kind of blog.

In My Garden

In my garden this week: monsoon season! Rain, rain, and more rain. As you can see in the pictures above we get a lot of water in a very short time. Yesterday morning within 15 minutes we had 3 inches of rain pour off our roof. We have gutters, but not very effective ones. We have a complete water harvesting overhaul listed in the plans for next spring. That means replacing the existing gutters and putting in a cistern to hold the water. Something we’ll have the pros come do for us. For now I am taking notes on where the water pools and how best to dig holes to channel runoff.

I’ve been reading up on permaculture and water harvesting in an effort to get a more sustainable backyard plan going. I figure if we are going to live in the desert better do it responsibly.

As for the food in my garden it’s mostly basil and tomatoes. I recently planted a lot of sunflowers and native corn beans and squash and they all were sprouting and then one morning I walked out to find the dog had eaten them all. Needless to say Lily is not allowed outside unsupervised anymore. I replanted of course and so with all the rain we shall see what comes up.

Just a quick reminder if you haven’t already and want to sign up to receive a postcard from someone please checkout the Summer Postcard Exchange!

We’ve only had rain at the house three times so far but I know if I could harvest that rainwater properly we’d have all three barrels filled already. I was wondering if you even needed to have rainwater harvesting up north.

The farmer that we used to do a CSA with would pull out every bucket, pot, trashcan, etc., when it rained like that. Her garden was too big to water from their well, so she saved every drop she could get her hands on. It was adorable, but necessary.

We have plans for water recoup systems as well. We’ve found quite a few DIYs that will allow us to do it ourselves. And WOW! Those are some downpours! I’d be putting Rubbermaid containers, trashcans and buckets all over my yard too! LOL!